Disjointed Ireland ready for beast of Eden? | That David Humphreys interview
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Hello, you're very welcome to the RT Rugby Podcast as we look forward to New Zealand All Blacks Week. Bernard Jackman with me in the studio and Neil is on the line from, I presume, Auckland in one of the five-star luxury hotels that there are around Eden Park. Neil?
Not quite, Hugh. I am in Auckland. Not quite five stars. Are you in a B&B somewhere? I won't complain.
Listen, I won't question the standard of accommodation that RT put you up with while you were away. We'll just say you're somewhere nice and you're ready for the week. Bert Stuck, we'll come back to New Zealand. I had to talk a little bit about last weekend because the stories have moved on somewhat, but a couple of interesting talking points, I guess, after the game. It wasn't a great performance. It was quite disjointed. Is that to be expected when you throw a bunch of guys in who don't play a huge amount together with some experience and ask them to play against Japan?
I think it is in the EU and particularly Ireland because of how structured, how reliant we are on cohesion. We're more than every other team. France, for example, go away and make a load of changes, send a top 14 final weekend squad to Auckland and yet look like they're, they look like France because it's the nature of how they play. It's a little bit more individual, it's a little bit more off the cuff. Whereas Ireland are very, very structured and then you put a few new faces in there and it's just players are slightly too flat, slightly too deep and maybe the comms aren't as good as they normally are and suddenly it just becomes a little bit disjointed. Surprisingly, and this is probably the rare, like normally against Japan, our set piece is so good that the rest of the stuff, you have so much possession that it doesn't really matter if you're not as accurate on every possession.
Whereas because our line-out struggled and because our scrum wasn't where we would like it to be, we had less possession and then obviously it becomes even more highlighted and you get into a battle. I mean, the game was still very much... in the balance I think with 10 odd minutes to go which again isn't great but it's understandable because it is the midweek game of a tour everything focuses on New Zealand Farrad had made some changes which I think is welcomed so yeah I can totally understand why But we have to say it wasn't a great performance.
Do you think that, you know, in this case, and I'll come back to Neil on this in a second and get the, the Arden coach's view, you know, when you, when you have a few guys and I mentioned, you know, the scrum half backup position is still open, you know, Doak obviously versus Casey, Frawley had a big opportunity as well. One or two other players that sometimes maybe they put too much pressure on themselves to perform and it's, It's more, I don't know, are they more thinking about themselves than what a team is trying to do and then the performances just don't add up? Or do you tally?
I've seen a lot of criticism of the halfbacks, but I think to be fair to Craig Casey and Frawley, it's not as if they've had much game time. I mean, Frawley came off the bench last week, but he hadn't played before that since the Champions Cup final in Bilbao. Craig Casey sat on the bench last week for 80 minutes, didn't get a game time. And his last game was Munsters, which was the end of May. So... you know for your halfbacks particularly a team like Ireland who want to play tempo you would like them to have more game time in their legs neither of them grabbed the opportunity you'd say like Sean Jansen did but it's a little bit different I thought the pack at times I'll obviously talk about a set piece but just in general there wasn't that quick ball that you would expect Craig Casey and Fraudy to to thrive in it was a little bit disjointed so I thought it was a harsh one for them but
But I still think that they're both players who have, you know, well, obviously we're very reliant on them in Ireland because they're part of our nine depth chart top three and 10 depth chart probably top three as well.
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